


House of Grief

by Calais_Reno



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Comfort, Don't copy to another site, Fear, Friends to Lovers, Gothic, Grief/Mourning, Haunted Houses, Horror, Love, Lovecraftian, M/M, Paranormal, Paranormal Investigators, Post-Reichenbach, Separations, Spirits, Suspense, seance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-09 14:06:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19889068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calais_Reno/pseuds/Calais_Reno
Summary: Holmes, back from hiatus, takes the case of a woman who claims her house is haunted. He asks Watson to accompany him, to solve the mystery of her house. The case will lead them where they never thought they would go, and bridge the gap of their long separation.Inspiration: the works of H.P. Lovecraft and the novel House of Leaves.





	1. The New Door

Over the years of our partnership, John Watson has written up many of my cases, which we have seen published in the Strand Magazine. Even so, there are many pages of notes covering cases he chose not to share with the public, the majority for reasons of confidentiality, a few because they were easily solved and did not (as he put it) give an opportunity to showcase my talents. The following case, which I have written for my own purposes, is one he did not choose to publish for quite a different reason.

It began in October of 1894, six months after my return from exile. I was occupying the rooms at Baker Street by myself then, as Watson was still living in the house he had occupied since his marriage. My scientific apparatus and instruments were spread over every surface of the living space, including (to the dismay of Mrs Hudson) the breakfast table. I probably should have gone over to Bart’s and used the lab there, but I had not yet reinstated my status with the hospital as an independent research fellow. Cases had been few, and I admit I was bored— not to the point where I would shoot holes in the walls again, but enough to take the case which was about to land in my sitting room.

Mrs Hudson ushered a lady up the stairs and, grimacing at the mess I’d created, asked if I would see a potential client. I agreed at once, and hastened to clear off a spot for her on Watson’s old chair, piling books and notes on the settee.

The lady was Mrs Eleanor Hadley, an American lately moved to England. Her husband, Isaac, had just inherited some land with a house in Essex, near Colchester, and as he had recently retired from a teaching career at a college in Pennsylvania, they planned to make England their home so that he could do research and write.

If Watson had been present for the interview, he would have described her as a tall and stately woman of middle age, possessing the energy of a much younger woman. He would have noted the intelligent expression in her eyes, the amused quirk of her mouth, the sensible country tweeds she wore.

“Isaac’s people are from Essex,” she said. “The house came to us after the death of his cousin. We never expected to be heirs to anything from his family, since Isaac has spent most of his life in the States and has several cousins who would have prior claims on any property. But it seemed fortuitous, as we were just considering where to retire, and wanting to travel as well. Isaac has several writing projects as well, and can do some research here. It’s rather more house than we need, but we considered that we might turn it into an inn.”

I nodded. “Please lay before me anything, however trivial, that can help me understand your reasons for consulting me today.”

“Mr Holmes,” she began, looking at me with resolve. “You are a man of science, I have heard, not given to unfounded conclusions.”

“That is so. You may be assured that I will consider all the evidence before reaching any conclusion.”

“I want you to understand that I am not a silly woman, nor one inclined towards hysteria,” she said, eyeing me with a level expression. “I am not one of those who attend seances or tilt tables or give credence to ghosts and fairies.”

“Of course. I am a sceptic as well.”

She smiled thinly. “My house is haunted, Mr Holmes.”

This rendered me silent for a moment. I receive frequent calls to investigate spiritual phenomena, but I rarely take such cases. There were two reasons I did not immediately refuse her request. The first was the lady herself. There was something so solid and sensible about her, I could not believe she would travel all the way from Essex to London on a mere suspicion. I was curious as to what could have convinced her that her house was haunted, and how she had concluded that I could cast out the spirits that haunted it.

Reading my hesitation, perhaps, she continued before I could reply. “It is precisely because of your reputation that I came here today. My husband and I are educated people. We are not whimsical or fanciful or bohemian in the least. We are not imagining the things that are happening in our house. I wish for you to investigate these phenomena, and tell us their cause, if you can.”

“Please describe what you have observed.”

“There are sounds. Not like chains dragging or moaning voices. It is a kind of unearthly sound, almost a growl or a howl, that we hear from somewhere in the house. When we walk around, listening for the source, it is never closer or farther away. It consistently sounds distant, but it cannot be heard from outside the house. We have had all the systems checked and know that it is not any of the pipes, nor any vents, ducts or wiring. It is not constant, but we hear it every few days, always after dark.”

This could easily be checked with the correct instruments, I thought. “What else?”

“This will sound foolish, perhaps,” she said.

“Dear lady, I can see you are a sensible person. No detail, however insignificant you may think it, is too foolish or odd to mention.”

“We have a feeling of dread while in the house, especially on the first floor. I don’t know how to explain it other than an inexplicable fear that seems to hang over us. I first mentioned it to Isaac several days after we’d moved in. I thought perhaps I was coming down with an illness. He said the same.”

“Headache? Nausea?”

She shook her head. “An uneasy feeling. Almost as if… as if we were being watched.”

“I assume you checked all of the windows and doors.”

“Yes. The day after I mentioned my uneasiness, Isaac went around with tools and a can of oil, making sure the jamb and hinges were properly installed and that there was no creaking when opened or closed.”

“Do your servants feel the same apprehension?”

She gave a short laugh. “Apparently this house is well known in the neighbourhood, for when we advertised for servants, none applied.”

“Have you asked your neighbours about any of this?”

“Our inquiries have been met with politeness, but no answers. People are reluctant to express an opinion about it.” She sighed. “We have taken to walking every day, just to get outside. Once the door is shut, our minds lighten. Even on the coldest, most inclement days, we must walk. And when we return, the feeling returns.”

“Does anyone besides you or your husband have a key to the house?”

“Not that I know of. The house agent turned over two keys to us when we arrived.”

“Have you noted any temperature differences within the house?”

“Yes, and my husband obtained a barometer as well. Certain rooms are colder than others, but the barometric pressure seems consistent with the outdoors.”

“Your house has no central heating system? No floor ducts or vents?”

“No. The house is over a hundred years old and had some restoration work, but no major renovations. There are fireplaces in the larger rooms, but we had the chimneys cleaned before moving, and rechecked after we started using them in October.”

“I will be happy to look at your house, Mrs Hadley. If you don’t mind, I may ask a colleague to join me.” I was convinced, at this point, that the solution would turn out to be something quite ordinary.

She smiled. “You haven’t even heard the most interesting part, the thing that brought me here.”

“What is that?”

“My husband and I were away last week for a few days, visiting an old school friend. We returned Saturday and found that a new door had appeared.”

“A new door? Where is this door located?”

“In the ground floor drawing room, on the same wall with the fireplace.”

“What kind of door is it?”

“A normal door, quite the same as the others in the house. It has panels, a door knob, and a keyhole.” She gave a short laugh. “You will now ask me if it is possible we hadn’t noticed the door before we went away. I assure you, Mr Holmes, that we had sat in that room every evening for two months and would have noticed a door.”

“What does it open into?”

“It’s locked. The keys we were given on taking possession do not open it. Before engaging a locksmith, we attempted to pick it ourselves. When we visited the locksmith in town, he made an excuse and said he could not help.”

“Was there evidence that someone had come to work on the house? Any tools, wood shavings, etc?”

“No. The door appears to have been there as long as the the other doors in the house. The paint is not fresh, there are no signs that any sawing, cutting, painting, or drilling took place. The hardware is not new. It is as if it has always existed.”

“I will come to see your house, Mrs Hadley,” I said. “Will you be at home the day after tomorrow?”

“We will be in town, though not at home.” She sighed. “My husband and I have taken rooms at a local inn. It was simply too much to see that door, to stare at it every evening. We can get you a room there, if you wish.”

“I will stay in your house, if that is agreeable to you.”

She cocked an eyebrow at me. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Mr Holmes.”

I smiled. “I’m not afraid of ghosts, madam. And I will have a colleague with me, another set of eyes on whatever is causing these events.”

The second reason I did not refuse the case was because of John Watson.

Six months ago I returned, as I’ve said, from my exile, my supposed death. I sought out Watson, my dearest friend, and stood in his study, smiling at him. His astonishment when I removed my white hair and whiskers, revealing my identity, was more than I expected. He was deeply shaken by my resurrection, but recovered in a few moments. I knew at that time that his wife had died. It was not until two days later, after the affair of the Empty House, when we had seen Colonel Moran taken into custody, that he fully confessed what had happened.

Mary, his wife, had finally conceived a child. I had known their hopes, but Watson had never disclosed why those hopes had not been realised for the several years they had been married. We sat at Baker Street that night, after Moran had been taken in by my wax decoy, drinking brandy. He told me of the miscarriages and the pregnancy that had finally gone to term, the little girl who had been born during my absence, only to die in her cot four months later. Mary died six months after that, stricken with a minor respiratory illness that no one expected to kill a young, healthy woman. Watson said she was never the same after their daughter Rose passed away. Her death certificate gave pneumonia as the cause, but he knew it was from a broken heart, that she had lost her will to live.

It was then, I suspected, that his interest in spiritualism came about. When he first spoke of it, I was disappointed that my intelligent friend had swallowed such codswallop. But I did not say what I was thinking, knowing that it would only lead to anger and withdrawal. We have had our disagreements in the past, sometimes over petty things, other times more serious. But we have always been able to talk like rational men. When he felt I was too inclined to disregard people’s feelings, he would tell me, “Holmes, feelings may get in the way of reason, but they cannot simply be dismissed. Sometimes you must let people feel what they feel before they can see reason.”

He was right. Not because feelings can help us see the truth, but because you can’t simply ask people to stop feeling and _think._ It is human nature to feel things— even for me.

And so, when he talked about British Society for Psychical Research, when he urged me to read some of the monographs written by its members, I did read them. And I did not argue with him. We did not discuss it at all.

Thus a gap of silence widened between us. When we met, we could still talk about everyday things, discuss a case, a news story, music, or sport. But he did not move back to Baker Street, even though I invited him. It would have meant longer silences, stretching into resentment. He was like a religious convert who suddenly finds that the rest of the world is rejecting the thing that has filled his life. I would not martyr him. We must remain friends.

But it was a different kind of friendship. He kept regular contact, stopping by after seeing patients, accepting invitations to dine out at our favourite places. And I tried to console him for his losses, but this always made him reserved, even wary. He understood my position, did not proselytise or preach at me, knowing, as I did, that to discuss it would end our friendship. I was glad that he still valued me that much.

I am not a man made for marriage and children. John Watson is the only person with whom I could imagine spending my life. It is in my nature to feel things, as any man does, and I had to give him that same privilege. Though I value reason above all, I could not dispute his beliefs with reason.

This is why I accepted the case.

I had no doubt that the solution would be human, not supernatural, but I would not use this as a lesson against spiritualism. Rather, I would use it as a lesson for myself in how to respect his views. I would listen to his observations, consider what he offered.

Watson and I had worked together for years; he knew my methods well. One of the first things I had impressed on him was that we cannot twist the facts to fit a theory. I had faith that he would eventually realise that the people he called authorities in spiritualism were arguing things without evidence, and that communication with the dead could easily be faked, that mediums used methods that only the gullible could believe. I did not want to force realisation on him, though. I would never wish to humiliate him into agreement.

I went to see him that very afternoon, hoping he would be finished with patients. He was just washing his hands when I entered the surgery.

He was a believer in the germ theory before many of his colleagues had given up their acceptance of the miasma. Robert Koch and Joseph Lister are his heroes. We had often discussed developments in bacteriology and its possible applications to solving crimes. Neither of us was old enough to remember the cholera epidemic of 1854, but we had in our lifetime witnessed the introduction of sanitary plumbing and the decrease of disease. My Watson is a scientist, I reminded myself.

We went to an Indian restaurant. During his military service, he developed a taste for hot curry, and even theorised that spicy peppers may have an effect on germs. When I was once incapacitated with a severe respiratory congestion, he made me drink a spicy broth that cleared my sinuses. He theorised that whatever the peppers contained that made them burn the tongue also killed germs.

As we drank our chai, I explained the case to him. Though I had always asked him to join me on cases, I suddenly felt shy, thinking he might suspect my motives.

He listened intently to all the details Mrs Hadley had shared with me. “I promised to go down the day after tomorrow and see the house. Will you come with me? I know it’s short notice, but your assistance would be invaluable.”

“How do you propose to investigate? Scientifically, I mean.”

“I have instruments I can bring— a galvanometer, an oscillograph— and will collect some data. I also propose to spend the night in the house, recording my own observations and investigating the sources of any phenomena.”

He nodded. “I can get Anstruther to be available for my patients. It is not as if I am much in demand these days.”

I had noted the subtle signs that he was struggling a bit, financially. His shoes lacked the polish I had learned to expect of him, and his jacket was several years old, beginning to fray a bit along the front edges. He was thin, and looked tired, but I had attributed that to hisrecent bereavements. It had been nearly two years since Mary died, and he had no doubt put his practice on hold before that to deal with his child’s death and her subsequent depression and illness. It was difficult to build a practice, he had once explained to me. Patients can be very loyal, but they are fickle as well, and if they are forced to see another physician in an emergency, any positive outcome may lead to a switch. It had been all he could do to build a practice that would support a wife and family. Though his needs were reduced now, he still had his house and a few servants. I vowed to ask him again if he might consider moving in with me, and to split my fee on this case with him.

“So good of you, my dear man,” I said. “Let’s meet at the train Thursday, at nine.”

On the train, we chatted about inconsequential things. He complained of his servant girl, whom he’d kept on since Mary’s death, even though she was careless. He mentioned a couple of his recent patients and their ailments. I told him how Mrs Hudson was doing, and about her nephew, who had effected some repairs on the flat.

“Do you have any theories about this house, Holmes?” he asked me when our conversation seemed to be running dry.

“None,” I replied. “It is a capital mistake to theorise without facts. I have only the lady’s testimony to go on. She seems a sensible woman, so when she claims her house is haunted, I am intrigued.”

He smiled. “You are disinterested, then. Your mind is open to all possibilities.”

I nodded, able to claim this without any prevarication. “Even the most improbable solution may be correct, once we have eliminated the impossible.”

“You are the least biased person I have known.” His smile broadened. “I am interested in this case.”

“I thought you might be. And I hope you will draw my attention to any bias or failure to account for all possibilities.”

“Indeed I will.” His eyes were distant, though, when he said this.

We arrived at the Colchester station. Since we had several hours until we were due to meet the Hadleys, we headed for the Land Registry Office. There we met a local historian, Mr James Wilcox, whom I had contacted by telegram. We introduced ourselves.

“I’ve looked up some information for you,” he said. “What is your interest in Eastbrook Manor?”

“The owners have contracted with me to learn its history,” I said.

Mr Wilcox smiled. “They might have asked me themselves.”

“They are new to the area, and Americans. They asked, but were not able to get much guidance from the locals.”

“Ah. They are wondering about the legends. I know your reputation, Mr Holmes, and guessed that you might have been brought in to dispel some of the mystery of the house.”

“You have guessed correctly. There seems to be a ghost story hovering over the place that makes it difficult to hire servants.”

“It might be called it a spiritual miasma.” he said. “Or a psychic pollution. There is no ghost story, as far as I have been able to determine.”

“What is the source of this miasma?” Watson asked.

“Let us look at the history of the place, and perhaps you can decide for yourselves.”

He led us to a map room, where he laid out an old map of the area. “This is before the present house was built, in the late seventeenth century,” he said, pointing out the location. “The land at that time belonged to the Steward of Colchester, a man named Edwin Poole. A house stood on the land in the same location as the present house. It was called Greve House, possibly a variation of Grave House. There was a small cemetery nearby, so that may be the origin of the name. Mr Poole suffered a series of misfortunes, both financial and personal. His wife and all of his sons died, one after another, leaving him with just one daughter, a widow with no children, who stayed with him during his last illness. There is a legend that he cursed the house as he lay dying, but the place already had a reputation before that. It served as a hospital during the outbreaks of plague during the sixteenth century, which may be the source of the cemetery and the name of the house.”

“The present house was built during the mid eighteenth century, was it not?” I asked.

He nodded. “1768. Greve House had already fallen to ruin by that time. A man named Elias Lowell bought the land and built Eastbrook Manor, hoping with the change of name to change its luck. He had made a pile of money in designing looms for textile factories and was eager to live like the landed gentry. Within five years, he had lost his fortune and hanged himself. Not a pleasant thing to own a house where someone has killed themselves.”

“Still,” I said. “One can hardly blame the house for that.”

“No, but people talk, and a it doesn’t matter how many good things happen in a house after that. It leaves an aura.”

I frowned at his use of the word _aura._ Calling it a _miasma_ had seemed almost humorous, but _aura_ was a word coopted by spiritualists to indicate the presence of spirits. “Are you a believer in ghosts, Mr Wilcox?”

“Not my area, Mr Holmes. I haven’t an ax to grind either way. History is full of dead people, and many of them leave behind bad feelings, which in turn affect the living.”

“Have any artefacts been found in the area?” Watson asked. “I am wondering whether any prehistoric Celts built on the land. I am aware of the Roman Wall, but I am considering the era before that. Are there any ruins predating the Romans?”

Mr Wilcox shrugged. “England belonged to the Celts before the Romans arrived. There’s the Roman Wall, as you mention.” He pointed it out on the map. “There might be amateur archaeologists you could talk to. It’s quite a local hobby.”

“Thank you,” Watson said. “That sounds quite interesting.”

“What about since the textile baron?” I asked. “Who did the property belong to before the Hadley family acquired it?”

“It was briefly owned by another entrepreneur, but by 1803 the land and house had been acquired by Robert Hadley. The family has owned it since then, but has rarely occupied it. It was maintained, but not even a crew of servants could be persuaded to live there after Mr Lowell killed himself. There were reports of sounds that might be characterised as supernatural.”

“An empty house may well seem to produce eerie sounds,” I said.

He smiled. “Or perhaps it really is haunted.”


	2. A Seance

We took a hansom from the station out to Eastbrook. The house was set back from the road, surrounded by trees, and we could see a small cottage a short distance from the house, but no other buildings within easy reach. The house was a small but lovely old Georgian manor. The grounds, however, had been neglected, giving it an air of antique desolation.

“Where are the Hadleys?” Watson asked. “Are they not meeting us here?”

“No, we’re to meet them in town at the Eagle, where they’re staying. We’ll have dinner there, and then return here to see the inside of the house. I just wanted to get the lay of the land before the sun sets.”

The Hadleys seemed glad to see us, but uneasy about the evening ahead of us. Our meal at the Eagle was pleasant. I wanted Watson to know these people; he would see how level-headed they were and understand their consternation at finding themselves owners of a haunted house. He is a sympathetic listener, my Watson. In my six months home, I had not forgotten how valuable his rapport with clients could be.

I had not met Mr Hadley before. He looked the part of a university lecturer, a bit heavy around the middle, balding, wearing wire-framed glasses to combat his nearsightedness. Like his wife, he seemed a sensible person. His speech was vaguely East Midlands with a strong overlay of American pronunciations and idioms. I noted a plaster on his hand.

“You spent your boyhood in Leicester,” I commented once we had drinks in hand.

Isaac Hadley raised his eyebrows. “A very good catch, Mr Holmes. Most English take me for an American. After thirty years, I thought I’d lost most of my accent.”

“I have made a study of accents. I only wish I could identify Americans by locale as easily as I do the English. I see you have been doing some work on your house.” I nodded at the plaster. “Dr Watson thinks it rude when I pretend to have conjured facts out of thin air. I noted your plaster and assumed you had done some work on the windows. Your wife mentioned cold areas in the house.”

“I hope you will not be offended, Mr Holmes,” said Mr Hadley, glancing at his wife. “Abigail has friends, one of whom is interested enough in our trouble to come out tonight. She is bringing an acquaintance who claims to be able to call up spirits.”

“Spirits?” I said, lifting my whisky glass in an attempt at humour. “Is she a medium?”

“She claims to be so,” Mrs Hadley said. “My friend Eleanor is a bit prone to romanticism. She is not quite a spiritualist, but is sensitive to their interests. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” I said. “I am willing to consider all avenues, even a seance. While I am not a believer in such things, whatever will make your home habitable will not be rejected by me.”

Watson was silent.

“And you, Dr Watson?” asked Mr Hadley. “Clearly, you are a man of science, like Mr Holmes. Are you also open-minded on the question of spirits?”

Watson nodded. “I am. I often think of my colleagues, fifty years ago, struggling to understand the notion of _germ theory._ Until that time, doctors had considered _miasma,_ bad air, to be the cause of many illnesses. Many were reluctant to let go of what they considered _science_ and embrace a wild theory that diseases were caused by tiny, invisible creatures. Likewise, we men of contemporary science may find ourselves confounded by new evidence of things unseen.” He smiled at me, raising his glass.

“When you put it that way,” said Mr Hadley, “I can easily see what you mean. The spiritual realm may be like that world discovered in the lens of a microscope.” He smiled at me. “Even Mr Holmes will agree that science has not had the final word on all the mysteries of the universe.”

“I do agree,” I said. “There is a great expanse lying between _improbable_ and _impossible._ I concede that there are many things we do not yet understand, and am willing to consider them as solutions. What I will not do, however, is to consider theories without evidence. You may trust me to solve your mystery with reason as well as diligence.”

We returned to the house at half past six, where we met our new companions at the gate of the Manor House, ready to deal with whatever the evening would uncover. As it was mid-winter, darkness had already fallen. Our guests were introduced to us as Mrs Eleanor Norton and Madame Celeste LaChance. The latter was an obvious stage name. The lady herself was tall, buxom, and had the air of a headmistress, ready to marshal people around and correct their errors. From her feathered turban to her sensible shoes, she was wearing some shade of blue. Even the multiple strands of beads she wore were green-blue, grey-blue, violet-blue, electric-blue. I estimated her to be in her fifties.

Mrs Norton was shorter and rounder than her friend, and a bit older. She greeted the Hadleys with great joy and sympathy, asking after their two sons. From her black dress, absent crape, and the wedding ring she wore on her right hand, I could tell she was a widow of more than two years.

Mrs Hadley took us at once into the back drawing room, adjacent to the dining room. “This is the door.”

It looked ordinary, like a door that had been there since the house was built. I tried it.

“It’s locked. We have no key, as I explained. No locksmith would come.” She laughed. “I would suspect it leads nowhere, seeing as there is nowhere for it to go. But its sudden appearance is quite disturbing.”

I pulled my lock picks out of my pocket, knelt down and began to fiddle with the lock. “There is something blocking my tool,” I said. We will have to take the hardware off to get it open.”

Madame LaChance was calling us. We filed into the reception room, a front parlour probably designed for the laying out of the deceased before funerals. It had evidently not been redecorated by the Hadleys. A table was set up, I observed, and six chairs. Watson and I stood while the ladies took their seats at the direction of Madame LaChance. It became obvious that Madame LaChance had intended for us to sit alternately by gender. Watson and I took seats on either side of her, and then Mrs Norton at my side, Mrs Hadley next to Watson, and Mr Hadley between those two ladies. The table was small and, as we were sitting close enough that we had to keep our legs still to avoid bumping one another. I sat opposite Mrs Hadley, Madame LaChance was across from Mr Hadley, and Watson was facing Mrs Norton.

Madame LaChance gave instructions. “We will use the spirit board first. It is a bit easier for novices than other methods.”

She produced a board with the alphabet written in large, gothic letters, and the words “yes” and “no” at the top corners, “hello” and “goodbye” at the bottom corners. This she set in the middle of the table. She then produced a device, a flat, wooden heart with a hole cut out in the middle, supported by small castors. This, she said, was the _planchette_ , which the spirits would use to spell out their answers.

I cast a look at Watson, who was nodding as if he already were familiar with spirit boards. Feeling my gaze, he turned and gave me a small smile.

“We will take turns having our fingers on the planchette,” Madame LaChance said. “Mr Hadley and I will begin, so that you may all see how it works. We will each place our fingers lightly on one side of the planchette. Do not drop your wrists or attempt to push it. You may keep your eyes open or closed, as you wish. Once the spirits know we want to speak with them, they will use their psychic power to move the planchette.”

This was very clear to me. The Carpenter Effect, also known as the ideomotor phenomenon, was named for William Benjamin Carpenter, who first posited that motor movement can be independent of conscious thought. In other words, people want to believe that spirits can spell out words on a board, and so they unconsciously make it happen. Or consciously, I have always believed. Seances are a social pastime, a party game, and there is always one person with a hand on the planchette who enjoys spelling out ribald messages.

Madame LaChance invited Mr Hadley, who looked as if he felt a bit embarrassed, to place the fingertips of both hands on the planchette. She did the same. “Let’s make it go round a few times to loosen things up.” They moved the planchette in a circle several times. “If you need a break, we can lift our hands off and rest for a few minutes. It does not break the spiritual connection. Anyone may ask questions once we are in conversation with a spirit, but do not be offensive or jocular. The spirits may break off communication at any moment for any reason. Do not anger them. I will initiate our conversation. Now, let us begin. I can feel that several spirits are already nearby.”

The planchette rested in the middle of the board for a minute or so, then began to move. At first it was tentative, as if one of the two partners was reluctant. “Relax, Mr Hadley,” the medium said. “If it helps, you may close your eyes.”

“I’m all right,” he said.

The medium assumed an aura of mystic concentration. “Greetings, spirit friends. Who will talk with us tonight?”

The planchette first went to the lower left corner: _Hello._

“With whom are we speaking?”

The board spelled out what might be a name: _ZOBI_.

Madame LaChance smiled. “Oh, hello Zobi! How are you this evening?”

_CROWDED VERY BUSY_

“Oh! Do you mean that there are many spirits here tonight?”

_YES_

“That’s delightful!” Madame LaChance smiled at Mrs Norton. “Is Albert there with you?”

_YES_

Mrs Norton spoke then. “Hello, my dear. Is Lila with you tonight? And darling Edmund?”

_LILA EDMUND BUSY_ The planchette jerked. _ZOBI HERE_

The medium laughed. “Very well, Zobi. Mind your manners. We have some new guests tonight who may wish to speak with their loved ones.”

“Who is Zobi?” asked Mr Hadley, a bit flustered. “Sorry. Maybe I’m not supposed to ask.”

Madame smiled graciously. “When she was in this world, Zobi was a geisha who lived in sixteenth-century Japan. She died tragically at the age of fifteen. Her body fell into a chasm and was never recovered, so she continues roaming the earth, speaking to the living through mediums. I talk to her very often and she is able to guide other spirits to talk as well. A vivacious girl, and sometimes a bit rude.”

I did not point out that at fifteen, Zobi would have been an apprentice, not a full geisha. Nor did I mention the improbability of young ladies in elevated clogs hiking in mountainous areas where chasms might be found.

_YOU RUDE_

Madame tutted at her. “Zobi dear, be nice. We are in Mr and Mrs Hadley’s home. Perhaps he has a question for you.”

Mr Hadley shook his head vigorously. “Sorry. It’s rather new for me, speaking to spirits. Please don’t take offence.” He smiled nervously. “Perhaps someone else would like a chance to try this?”

“Yes, that’s an excellent idea,” Madame agreed. “Zobi tends to take liberties when I am on the planchette. Shall we pass clockwise?”

She nodded at Watson, on her left, who placed his fingers on the planchette. Mr Hadley gratefully withdrew his and Mrs Norton took his place.

“Albert, are you there?” Mrs Norton asked.

_YES MARY TOO_

“Mary? Who is Mary?”

I suspected one of two things. Either Mrs Norton and Madame LaChance were co-conspirators who had researched both me and Watson ahead of time in order to guide the session. Or Watson was unconsciously pushing the planchette. From his face, I could not tell. I suspected that the ladies were in league to put on a good show for us.

_WATSON_

Madame LaChance turned to my friend. “Someone you know?”

“My wife. Hello, Mary.”

When he spoke his greeting, I felt the hairs on my neck rise up. Not because I sensed an unearthly presence, but because he spoke so calmly, as if this were a normal thing for him to be doing. I wondered what Mary would have thought.

_HELLO J_

“How are you, love? Holmes is here with me tonight—”

_GO HOME_

“You want me to leave?” He frowned. “What’s wrong?”

_EVIL HERE GO AWAY_

Madame leaned forward. “Mary, I can feel many spirits here tonight. Is there one among you whom you fear?”

_GO AWAY GOODBYE_

The planchette stopped moving. Everyone was silent, watching it. Watson raised his hands off the device. Mrs Norton did the same.

“I think we should take a short break,” Madame suggested. “I sense a disturbance in the psychic currents.”

Mrs Norton had brought a bottle of sherry. She and Mrs Hadley went to find glasses. Madame LaChance walked around the room, closing her eyes at intervals as if she were listening for something.

Mr Hadley mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. “Well, quite a thing, isn’t it?” He laughed nervously. “I can’t say as I understand it.”

“Indeed,” I said,looking at Watson, whose gaze was aimed downwards, towards the board, his expression blank.

“All right?” I asked quietly.

“Oh,” he said, rousing. “Yes, perfectly.”

I wasn’t sure what to ask without sounding like I was prying, but at that moment the ladies returned with the sherry. Watson stood and took a glass, as did the others. Not being fond of sherry, I declined. I followed Madame’s example and walked around the room, but I was looking at the books and decorations rather than listening for spirits. Mr Hadley seemed to crave some masculine company and followed along.

“You are a professor of history, Mr Hadley?”

“I am,” he said. “That is how I came to America. I was studying the colonial period, and then met this lady.” He smiled at his wife. “My student, at that time. I’d taught for thirty years when this house came to me and Abby. I was planning a book, not a history book, but an historic novel. This seemed like just the place to write it. Now— well, I don’t know. Perhaps all of this is just fodder for writing.” He laughed. “Perhaps my story needs a ghost or two!”

I smiled. “I am sure that your book will sell without ghosts.”

Watson was talking to Mrs Hadley. “I am not sure how I feel about this,” she was telling him. “I mean, we must be open-minded with things that are not understood well, but I confess it gives me shivers to talk about spirits floating around us, watching.” She shuddered. “Where we lived in Pennsylvania, there is a large Civil War cemetery. We have walked there, and I admit that I also felt eerie on those occasions, though I am not a believer in such things.” She looked around a bit nervously, as if she expected angry spirits to appear. “It’s the power of suggestion, I suppose.”

He nodded. “It’s natural to feel uneasy when faced with death on such a scale. I fought in Afghanistan, at the battle of Maiwand, and remember looking over the battlefield after the fighting ended, thinking of the many lives lost.”

“You’re right, Doctor,” she said. “I only hope you and Mr Holmes can help us. I quite like the house, aside from the terrifying noises and inexplicable doors.” She smiled. “Will you and he stay the night here?”

“We are prepared. Mr Holmes has brought some instruments to test the house, and we have lanterns and other necessary equipment. I’m not worried about what we shall see.”

Madame LaChance was gesturing for us all to reconvene our seance. “Mr Holmes, it’s your turn now, and Mrs Hadley. Take your seats and prepare yourselves.”

I was rather looking forward to my turn on the planchette. Being aware of the ideomotor phenomenon, and knowing that Mrs Hadley was also a skeptic, made me sure that we would receive no more messages from Zobi, the unlikely geisha.

Mrs Hadley looked nervous. I winked at her. “Shall we talk to the spirits, Mrs Hadley?”

“Of course.” She smiled back at me. “They’ve been my guests for weeks. I hope they will forgive me for not serving them tea.”

Madame frowned. “Let us begin.”

We put our hands on the planchette. Mrs Hadley closed her eyes for a moment. I simply waited.

After nearly two minutes, the planchette suddenly jerked.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, then pressed her lips together.

“Who is there?” asked Madame. “What spirit wishes to speak?”

The planchette moved rapidly. I could barely keep my fingers on it and I noted that Mrs Hadley was doing the same. It seemed to spell nonsense words.

_MWT… MARWOS… DOTH…DAUUS… MARG… THANATOS… MORS…_

“These are words for death,” Mr Hadley whispered.

Mrs Hadley gave a little scream and lifted her hands from the planchette. The words stopped.

“I will not stay here,” she said in a choked voice. “This is too much. I don’t— let us go, Isaac.”

Her husband stood and helped her to her feet, held her coat for her to put on. She was breathing shallowly, her face shiny with perspiration.

As they were making their preparations to leave— there would be no goodbyes or polite promises to _do this again_ — just then, a sudden chill fell over the room, as if all the heat had been sucked out. The fire still burned, but the gaslights dimmed, and in the darkness we could feel something uncanny taking shape.

Watson, my brave doctor, stood and looked around, undaunted. I felt a bit shocked that things had so quickly turned ominous when I had expected nothing out of the spirit board.

“Holmes!” he shouted, grabbing my arm. “Do you see?”

I looked where he was pointing and saw, just for an instant, something hovering in the cold air. It might have been a face, or a mask— but it was the most horrible face I have ever looked on— if it was a face. Without thinking, I gasped and took Watson’s hand. “What is it?”

He didn’t speak. The spectral face dissipated into a mist, which moved over the table, hovering as if it was observing what we had been doing. I held my breath.

“Who are you?” Madame asked. “I command you to speak!”

A strange transformation came over the medium’s face. Where she had appeared nothing more than a woman of fifty with a taste for drama, she suddenly seemed to be someone else, not a person so much as a presence. Her eyes rolled and her mouth fell open.

From her mouth issued a loud groan, which was answered by similar sound arising from somewhere else. It might have come from below or within. A groan, an inarticulate rending sound. There was a loud _crack_ , and then the lights came up again. The mist had vanished.

The medium collapsed on the small table, which tipped and fell to the floor. I rushed to her aid.

Watson was supporting Mrs Norton, who had fainted. “Mr Hadley,” he cried. “Brandy!”

“What was it?” Mrs Norton asked, opening her eyes. “Such a dreadful sound!”

Mr Hadley’s hands shook as he poured brandy for the women. He offered me a drink, but I shook my head. Watson likewise declined.

No one answered. Madame LaChance, revived by the brandy, seemed as surprised as anyone. She was the expert, however, and seized control. She walked to the place where the face had appeared and closed her eyes. I admired her courage for a few seconds, until it occurred to me again that she might have pre-arranged the entire spectacle. I could not see how at that moment, but my skepticism re-asserted itself as I watched her.

“There is something otherworldly here,” she asserted.

Vaguely stated, I thought, as all spiritualist claims are. _It is a show_ , I reminded myself. But even as I thought his, my heart was racing.

The Hadleys quickly went outside. Mrs Norton and Madame prepared to join them and share conveyance back to town.

“Well, Mr Holmes, Dr Watson,” the medium said. “If you wish to leave now, no one will blame you. Something evil is in this house, and it might be the better part of valour to leave your vigil for another night.”

“We will stay,” I said. “Have no fears for us, Madame.”

My dear, intrepid Watson nodded.


	3. In the Labyrinth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter may raise the hairs on the back of your neck. Proceed with caution!  
> (Remember: Nobody dies!)

After they had gone, I turned to Watson. “Have you ever witnessed anything like that?”

“No,” he said at once. “I admit, Holmes, that I came prepared to be scientific about this, to look for evidence of fraud, but I cannot see how these ladies accomplished such a thing. I have been to seances before, and at none of them did we receive messages like we saw tonight. Nor the signs— the face, the sounds…” He trailed off. “I am baffled and amazed.”

“Do you believe that you talked to Mary?”

He closed his eyes, frowning. “I don’t know, Holmes. She has addressed me before during seances, but has never called me J. She used to address me this way in letters and notes, but not in speaking. Our conversations were not like this one.” He sighed and sank into a chair, looking weary. “I’m not sure what to think.”

“You have more experience in these things,” I said to him. “What should we do here tonight? We have approximately nine hours until sunrise in which to figure this out.”

He nodded. “Let’s proceed methodically. Show me what instruments you’ve brought and what they are designed to do. Before we try to open that door, I suggest that we consider other possibilities that might tie all the events together. Have you any theories about the noise we heard? It did not sound human, nor even as if it could have been produced by a living thing.”

“Some physicists have studied vibrations as a cause of preternatural phenomena,” I said. “I have brought an experimental oscillograph which can show us vibrations too low or high for the human ear to hear.” I opened the case and let him see the device. “My theory is this: something is causing infrasonic vibrations in the house. The groan is what we hear when the pitch of the sound rises to levels we can hear, but even when it is too low for our ears to hear, we sense the vibrations, which might account for the eerie feeling reported. I have no idea what the source of such a vibration might be, but with the oscillograph we can at least see what we cannot hear.”

It was a fairly large and delicate instrument which a scientific colleague of mine had loaned to me. Watson watched with interest as I set it up.

“It will take several hours to collect sufficient data,” I said. “Let’s consider other theories as it runs. What other ideas do you have?”

“I thought perhaps some kind of gas or hallucinogenic agent might be responsible, but I did not detect any behavioural symptoms of gas poisoning. Carbonous oxide is one possibility, but the symptoms are fairly easy to spot. We would feel lethargy, not excitement, and nausea. Carbonic acid would create shortness of breathe and confusion. I don’t think that is what we witnessed; too sudden and simultaneous. Those are the most likely; other possible toxins would produce either smoke or an odour.”

I nodded. “Very good, Watson.”

“If we eliminate inhalation, I do not see how we all could have ingested a substance that would have affected us all so quickly, and to the same degree. We ate dinner with the Hadleys, but we all had different dishes. We all drank some of the sherry at the house, though, so perhaps we should analyse it.”

“No need, my boy,” I said. “I abstained. And I saw what the rest of you saw. It cannot be the sherry. And that bottle was newly opened tonight. The Hadleys have been living here for weeks. Can you think of any other medical reason that six adults would all experience what we did?”

“Hysteria,” he said. “Hard to diagnose. And I find it hard to believe that you and I both could have imagined what occurred, not after all the strange things we’ve seen.”

“I agree. Under the circumstances, we were fairly level-headed. And even if hysteria explains what happened here tonight, it does not explain what the Hadleys have described, unless we believe that two level-headed people lacking any imagination about such things have been hysterical for weeks. What else?”

Watson shook his head. “I can think of no other natural explanation.”

“Could this… event have been some spiritual phenomenon?” I had to ask, just to show that I was keeping my mind open. “Perhaps the house _is_ haunted.” I cleared my throat. “I’m not being facetious, John, just acknowledging that _haunted_ could mean some phenomenon that has no natural explanation at present.”

He gazed at me for a moment, perhaps evaluating my sincerity.

“Honestly, I cannot judge,” he said. “I would prefer to identify a natural cause, perhaps the vibrations you describe. Once we have eliminated that, we might consider the preternatural.”

I kept my expression neutral, but was proud of him for not abandoning science so quickly after our seance. We took some measurements of the room, comparing them to the floor plan of the house the Hadley’s had provided. We checked for vents in each room and examined the chimney flues. Watson used a stethoscope on the walls, listening for anything unusual. To all appearances, the house had shaken off its ghostly visitors, whatever they might be.

“Well, then,” I said, trying to sound confident. “Let’s get that door open. We should have gone outside and looked at the exterior of the house before it got dark.”

Watson smiled. “I’ll take a lantern and do so now.”

I turned to him, a sudden fear creeping into my heart. “One thing, Watson. Maybe this is all nonsense, but I would feel better if we remained together tonight. We should not separate. I know we have investigated many cases before, and often split up, but tonight I would prefer not to do that.”

He nodded. “Whatever happens, we shall witness it together.”

I sighed in relief. “Thank you. I always feel braver and more intelligent with you at my side.”

He returned my smile. “Then let’s take a look outside. Is there a rear door?”

I tried another door knob. It opened into the back garden. We lit our lanterns and stepped outside. As we rounded the corner to see how far out the house extended beyond the mystery door, we both stopped in our tracks.

“Impossible,” Watson said. “The door must be a false one, leading nowhere, since there can be nothing on the other side.” He gripped my forearm. “The wall is stone, and appears not to have been altered since the house was built. See— here is the chimney, and here ought to be the other side of the door, if it leads outside. It should extend into the back yard, but there is nothing. There is no other place it could lead.”

“A door to nowhere,” I said. “A builder’s joke?”

He shook his head, frowning. “Do you think the Hadleys could have simply overlooked it for the weeks they were living here?”

“I don’t see how. Let’s go back inside and see what we can learn from the door itself.”

In the drawing room, I looked at the wall above the door. “No evidence of a curtain that might have covered it, or any carpentry.”

Placing his stethoscope against the door, Watson knocked and listened. “Strange. It echoes.”

I followed suit, listened as he knocked. A faint echo could be heard.

“There’s only one way to find out.” I brought out my tools and began to detach the hardware from the door. When the plate was off, I reached in and turned the mechanism. The door opened.

At once a blast of cold air hit our faces. A stairwell was before us, leading down into darkness. Neither one of us stated the obvious, that what we were seeing was physically not possible, that the external measurements of the house did not match the internal space our eyes now witnessed.

I shouldered my pack. “Ready?”

“Wait,” said Watson. “Let’s go over our tools first, and then make sure we’ve left the front door unlocked.”

I didn’t ask why leaving the front door open was a good idea. Instinctively I felt the danger of what we were about to do and knew that if help was needed, we didn’t want a locked door between us and that help.

We divided our gear between two packs I had brought with me. There were ropes, knives, tools for picking locks and prying, matches, candles, bandages, water, and lanterns. Watson had also brought a large ball of twine and several pieces of chalk.

My questioning look produced a shrug from him. “Might be useful.”

As we repacked our bags, we heard the noise again, this time unmistakably coming from below. A growl, almost, but, as Watson had observed, it was not a growl made by anything living. The darkness in that stairwell was complete, almost solid, like clear water that has been muddied.

I watched as Watson went down the front hallway towards the front door, opened and closed it, and then returned to the drawing room. The oscilloscope was still recording, I saw.

We regarded the open door. Impulsively, Watson put his arms around me. “Together,” he whispered.

“Always,” I replied. His embrace had startled me, but I understood. He had gone into battle many times before, with brave men at his side. He had encouraged men to stand their ground against impossible circumstances, to live when they saw death staring at them. He had been the one who set an example for courage, and now, he was trying to hearten me, to let me know he would not desert me.

“Let’s go,” I said.

We tied ourselves to one another with a rope, looping it twice around our waists before knotting so it wouldn’t easily come undone. We checked the fuel in our lanterns, lit them, and began our descent. Watson insisted on leading. Perhaps he could sense my trepidation. I felt as if we were breaking into some alien realm, one where we were not welcome.

I reminded myself where we were, in a house in Essex, an ordinary scene such as many we’d been in before. There must be a logical explanation for the strange events, but I could not imagine one now. Still, I had sworn to observe without bias and solve this with reason. I had not quailed before criminals wielding guns and knives. This could hardly be more frightening. It was the unknown that was setting my heart pounding. That which is familiar— a house, a door, a stairway— becomes terrifying when something unknown is present. We would press for an explanation.

The darkness into which we descended was thick. I could see from his movements when Watson’s feet landed on level ground. He raised his face towards me and reached up for my hand.

Once I stood at the bottom, I lifted up my lantern and saw a large room with stone walls and a doorway on the opposite wall. “Pre-dates the house.” My voice echoed in the empty space. The ceiling was about twelve feet above the floor. We had climbed down at least that far, I estimated.

“It seems so,” Watson replied. His voice was steady, and my tension began to lessen. This might be the lower level of the old house, Greve House, as it was called. It felt ancient. We walked around the room, examining the stone walls and ceiling. It was cold, but I sensed no dampness, no smell of mould, only a tomb-like staleness, as if it had been closed off from the upper air.

“This room must be under the drawing room,” I said. “If we go through the doorway, leading north, we will be under the dining room, I think.”

Watson took the ball of twine out of his pack. “A clew,” he said, smiling. “We will use Ariadne’s trick to find our way back.”

It was a large ball, a long twine. He tied the end to the bannister of the stairs.

“I trust we will not need more length,” I said. “This level cannot be much larger than the existing house, even if Greve House had a larger foundation. It simply doesn’t make sense to excavate such a large cellar. It would cost a fortune.”

We went through the arched doorway into a long corridor. We could see about twenty yards ahead, where the passage seemed to turn. We walked.

When we reached the end of the corridor, we turned and looked down the next corridor.

“Labyrinth,” Watson muttered.

I was already struggling to reason out where we were underneath the house. I felt as if my usually strong sense of direction had deserted me. “Are we below the front parlour, do you think?”

Watson looked down the passage we had just come along. “I’m not even sure we’re still under the house. We’ve come a greater distance than seems possible. Shall we continue?”

Seeing no alternative, I assented. “Lead on, Theseus.*” We continued and soon came to a split in the passage. Again I tried to orient myself.

Watson was fishing in his pocket. Finally, he produced a piece of chalk. “At any points where the passage splits, we’ll mark which direction we came from.”

I once more blessed his common sense, which seemed to have led him towards more precautions than my wits had foreseen.

He kept his twine unwinding and marked every crossroads. Sometimes the passage split in several directions. This walking and turning went on for some forty minutes, by my estimate, until we found ourselves suddenly in a large, high-ceilinged room. I sensed cold air flowing from somewhere. The temperature here was several degrees lower than the passageway.

“How is this possible?” I asked. I had attempted to follow the turns by direction— North, east, south, west— and had no idea how a passage underneath the house could suddenly open into a room of this height. I was no longer certain we were even under the house.

“We must have been descending gradually, without realising it,” Watson said. “Have you checked your instruments?”

“The thermometer shows a temperature of 51 degrees, and barometric pressure is higher, but not unexpectedly so, since we are underground. The galvanometer, however, is not working, and the compass is going in circles. Something is upsetting the normal magnetism.”

Watson looked at his timepiece.“My watch appears to have stopped at half past nine. It must be going on eleven by now.”

I had made a note that 9:30 was about the time we got the door open.

“Shall we continue?” Watson said. His voice sounded level, and in the dim light cast by the lanterns his face seemed composed. I was glad for that. I felt uneasy, but his calmness grounded me once more.

“Certainly.” I shouldered my pack. “How much twine do you have?”

He looked at the ball. “Less than half of what I started with. When we reach the end of it, I suggest we follow it back. I’m not even sure what we are heading towards. This room is the first thing we’ve seen other than corridors.”

“Good plan. Let’s explore this room and see what lies beyond.”

We crossed the large expanse, shining our lanterns into corners. The ceiling was some thirty feet up at the highest point, sloping towards the sides of the room. I was leading us at that point, looking up as I headed across the room, when suddenly I felt intense cold. I looked down for the source of the frigid air, and found myself stepping into an abyss.

I dangled there, gasping, still bound by the rope to Watson. My lantern had dropped into the hole, but I watched its light swallowed up by the dark and did not hear it hit the bottom. I could see nothing below me. I looked up, over my shoulder, and saw Watson’s lantern illuminating the high ceiling. Then I felt him pulling the rope that had secured us together. He hauled me, inch by inch, towards the opening. I thank all the gods that he is a strong man, a tenacious one who would not let me fall.

A freezing wind blew around me; I could see nothing but blackness. Never before has darkness filled me with such horror. It was as if hell lay below me, at such a distance that its heat could not be felt. I felt like weeping, but did not want Watson to see me so unmanned. I closed my eyes and felt his incremental progress towards the opening, until I could hear him grunting with exertion. In another moment, he had me by the waist and was dragging me to safety.

He was breathing hard. I was panting as well, considering that I had almost fallen into that pit of darkness. I clung to him; he clung to me. We breathed deeply and felt each other’s fear.

“Watson,” I gasped. It came out more like a sob.

He patted my back, wrapped his hand around my wrist, taking my pulse. “That was unexpected,” he huffed. “I’m glad you’re not a corpulent fellow.” He gave a half-hearted laugh, then crept towards the edge of the hole on his belly. I followed, my main thought being that if he should begin slipping, I would grab him and haul him out.

We shone the lantern into the hole, but could see nothing. The air that came up was so cold that our breath turned to vapour.

A deep groan sounded, not from below, but from a distance. We involuntarily jumped, then crawled backwards, away from the abyss.

“I can see an opening over there.” Watson’s voice shook a bit as he got to his feet, raising his lantern. “And another in that direction.” He nodded towards it. “Shall we explore one of them?”

“We have but one lantern now,” I said. “We must not, under any circumstances, be separated.”

Though I could have sat there forever, clinging to him, I rose and slowly followed him towards the first doorway, holding his hand and watching my feet carefully, lest any new holes appear. We went through the stone archway and found ourselves in another corridor, as Watson had predicted.

“The walls have changed,” I noted. “This is more like a cave.”

“Yes. It does not seem man-made.”

I am not claustrophobic, as a rule, but the passage narrowed in places, and the ceiling above us lowered, forcing us to crawl. We had been proceeding like this, feeling our way, for less than an hour, when Watson announced that the twine had run out.

“We should start back,” he said. “I’m not comfortable in these passages, which are laid out by nature, not man. We may become trapped, if we’re not careful. Let’s go back to the large room and try a different passage.”

He re-wound the twine as we made our way back. There had been no branches off the path since we left the large room, but still I was concerned that it all looked so different.

“Different perspective,” Watson suggested, evidently reading my mind. “It’s bound to seem unfamiliar going in reverse.”

I felt relieved when we entered the large room again. We raised our lanterns, looking for the other archways. I remembered that Watson had marked one with chalk. I saw no white marks on the wall.

We carefully made our way around the edges of the room towards the arch where the twine led. The white mark was gone.

“Where is it?” I looked around the room one more time. “This must be it, but the chalk is gone.”

“Moisture,” Watson suggested. “Though I don’t sense much humidity.”

I chuckled grimly. “You’re taking all of this in stride, old man.”

He shrugged. “I expect to see any number of improbable things down here, but none, I hope, that are impossible.”

We heard the sound again, groaning somewhere in the labyrinth. There was something unearthly about that sound. “What do you think the source is?” I asked.

“Air currents, perhaps?”

“It does not sound like air. It sounds like parts of a machine grinding against one another.”

He nodded. “Or stones rearranging themselves. We’re not in a seismic zone, though. And the Hadleys have no mechanical appliances in their house. If this is medieval—”

Another groan sounded, and I could almost feel vibrations in the air. “Shall we follow the twine?”

“Right,” he said.

We continued down the corridor until we came to a place where two paths branched off. I could see our twine continuing down one arched hallway. “I don’t remember that other passage,” I said.

“Nor do I. Shall we try it?”

We set out on our new route, unwinding the twine again.

“It’s interesting,” Watson said. “Those cave passages have probably been here for millennia. Perhaps our ancient Celtic forbearers walked those corridors.”

“I was thinking that there must be another opening than the one that leads from that large room. If the people who built this labyrinth knew of the caves, they might have had another entrance.”

“It might be worth exploring from above. Maybe some locals know about the caves.”

It was an unspoken rule between us, accepted for all the years we’d been together, finding ourselves in dangerous places, that we do not voice our fears. I think we both instinctively knew that to do so would deflate the bravado that such situations require. I wanted badly to ask Watson whether he felt anything supernatural, whether he felt the nameless fear that was twisting my insides, but I could not. I followed my soldier and took courage from his practical manner.

We talked little, but occasionally asked one another, “All right?” Mostly this was just to hear the other’s voice, to reassure ourselves that we had not ceased to exist in a real world where sound waves still moved through space. We were hearing the groaning sound more frequently now, and I wondered if we were approaching its source. It never seemed to grow louder, however, and there was nothing to learn from it.

We’d been walking for hours, it seemed. My internal clock said it had to be well after midnight. Watson, who was leading, halted.

“I think we should rest for a few minutes,” he said. “I don’t want to become so weary that we make poor choices. Let’s sit here a while and calm ourselves, then go on until the twine runs out. I estimate that will be another half an hour. At that point, we can consider whether it’s time to head back to the stairway.”

I nodded. I had the feeling that time did not move in the same manner down here as in the living world above us. I reminded myself that there was a world up there, a house with rooms, and a driveway, and a road leading back to town. There was tea in that world, and warm beds, and fireplaces glowing.

Suddenly, I wanted very much to see that stairway again, to climb into the drawing room and see the embers smouldering red in the fireplace, hear the ticking of the clock, and know that we could walk through the front door, out of this house. I thought of my rooms at Baker Street, of evenings with Watson, talking of our cases. And I wished that this case had involved nothing more horrific than a dead body.

We instinctively sat together, leaning a bit on one another. I slipped my hand under his arm. He leaned back and closed his eyes. “Just a few minutes,” he said.

In a short time I could hear him snoring lightly. For myself, sleep was not possible. I was simply too wound up, too edgy and tense. But Watson is a soldier, and could sleep almost anywhere, under any circumstances. His warm weight against my side was comforting. I resolved to let him sleep a bit and dimmed the lantern to save fuel.

It was dark when I awoke. I hadn’t intended to fall asleep, and cursed myself for doing so. I had no idea how much time had passed. We must turn around, I decided, and follow the twine back to the stairs, into the house.

“Watson,” I said quietly. He had moved from my side, I thought, maybe reclining on the floor. When I did not hear him breathing, I stretched out my hands to search for him. “Watson!” I called louder. “Watson, where are you?”

I felt for the rope which we had fastened between us. Gone. He was gone as well, with his pack and the twine. I felt my own pack, but remembered that my lantern had fallen into the abyss. Pitch darkness closed in around me like a suffocating cloud.

The labyrinth groaned.

I was alone.

I rose to my feet, keeping my hand on the wall. I remembered which direction we were going when we decided to rest. Here in the dark, I might wait for him to return— but _why had he gone?_ We had agreed to stay together. Something had led him to leave my side. Perhaps he needed to relieve himself, I thought. But he would not have walked out of earshot. Nor would he have untied the rope.

Feeling a bit panicked, I sank down and felt around the floor again, hoping that the lantern had just been knocked out of reach.

Perhaps Watson had walked in his sleep. He was not prone to this, as far as I knew. He had experienced nightmares for a long time after returning from Afghanistan, but I had never caught him wandering around the flat while asleep.

I called his name again, as loudly as I could. My voice reverberated off the walls and faded. It was answered by another groan.

My mind, beset by fear, threatened to run down some whimsical path, leaving reality behind. I sat, breathing slowly, gathering my wits. Courage I had no more, but my brain could help me figure this out, if I only could get myself to think.

I rose to my feet again. The wall behind me was stones, fitted against one another by some ancient stonemason. No spirits had built this place. Humans had been here. I felt the wall, found my bearings, and began to walk through the dark, keeping one hand on the wall. I was going back, I thought, towards the crossroads where we had begun unwinding the twine again. If I could reach that place, I might pick up the thread again.

As I walked, I hummed and sang a bit to myself. When the groan sounded, I sang louder, hearing my voice shake, but it was my own voice, nevertheless, confirmation that I was alive. Because I could see nothing, the echoes of my voice and my footsteps helped me gauge the space. Hearing the echoes change, I thought I might be coming to the opening. As I approached what I thought was the crossroads, I could see light.

“Watson!” I called, relieved. He did not answer, but the light grew brighter.

I saw him, then, further along the passage. He stood, his back to me.

“Watson, where did you go? I thought—”

He moved away, almost as if he hadn’t heard me. I hurried after him, calling his name. He did not look back. He held his lantern, but the light seemed to come from himself, almost as if he, not the lantern, was glowing. It was not the yellow light of gas, but a bluish iridescence.

At this point, I considered whether I had gone mad. It all seemed real enough— I could feel the cold of the stones around me, smell an acrid darkness, hear Watson’s footsteps. But nothing was normal about this. I had always trusted my brain to keep me from giving in to fanciful fears, but now I could not tell whether my senses were telling me the truth. Watson looked like himself, but seemed insubstantial, like a dream. Like a ghost. I wanted to grab him, shake him, and see his eyes open, blinking, and know me.

I continued calling and running towards him, arriving at the crossroads just in time to see him head into another passage. Just before he did, he turned and looked at me. His face was expressionless, like that of a sleepwalker.

“Watson! Wait!” Filled with dread, I followed his light through the archway and found myself in a room, one smaller than the others we’d found. A glow came from beyond, through another doorway. I went forward, calling softly now, “Watson?” I stepped through the opening and looked into the chamber.

When I saw him, I could scarcely breathe.

Still surrounded by the unearthly glow, he lay still on the floor of the stone room. I approached and went down on my knees to see him. His face was pale, his eyes closed. I reached my hand towards him, touched his cold cheek. I felt for his pulse, lay my hand on his chest to find his beating heart. He was as still as stone, his skin grey with an unearthly pallor. Where the other I saw had been a ghost, this was a corpse.

“Oh, Watson!” I could not help myself. “Oh, John— my dear John!” I lay my head on his chest and wept. I did not know what had happened, how he had died. There were no visible wounds. It was as if he had simply been struck down.

I heard the groan again and jumped to my feet. It was as if we were in some great creature’s belly. It was not stalking us; we had walked into its maw. I wept that I had been so sure of myself, that I had thought to prove Watson wrong by showing him how reason could triumph over the claims of spiritualism. Instead, I had stumbled into an abyss where reason had no meaning.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “So sorry, John.” I sank to the ground beside him, weeping, not caring if I lived or died. No one might ever know what had happened to us, but I would not be parted from him now. Whatever kind of death had found him, I would wait and meet it as well.

“I won’t leave you.” I then whispered the words I’d never said to him. “I love you.”

A groan sounded from deep in the passageway, drowning out my own groans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Theseus was the Greek hero who made his way through the Labyrinth and killed the Minotaur with the help of Ariadne, the daughter of king Minos.


	4. The Very Painting of Our Fears

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “There are things that are real, and yet cannot be proved.”

I don’t know how long I stayed there next to his body. It was cold, but I lay in a daze, all my tears wrung out of me. I only roused when I heard a voice calling me.

“Holmes! Answer me!” I could hear footsteps approaching. “Sherlock! Where are you?”

I sat up. The glow had gone, leaving me in darkness. I felt for Watson’s body, but it too was gone.

“Holmes, where are you?”

“Here!” I cried weakly. “Watson— I’m here!”

Light appeared in the doorway. “Thank God! Sherlock—” Watson was at my side, feeling me, checking me for injuries. “Where did you go? I woke up and you were gone.” Satisfied that I was unharmed, he sat back on his heels and regarded me resentfully. “Why did you untie the rope? We agreed we would not split up.”

“You were gone,” I said shakily. “I fell asleep beside you, and when I woke, you had left.” Shuddering, I reached for him. “Why did you leave me? I couldn’t find you— until— until—” I began to sob.

“Hush, you’re all right,” he said, embracing me. “I don’t know what happened. When I awoke, I stepped away to relieve myself. I took only a couple of steps from you, but when I turned back, you were gone. I hadn’t heard you move. It was— impossible.”

He rocked me as I wept, making shushing noises the way one comforts a child.

“You think me a fool,” I said, “blubbering like this...”

He pulled a clean handkerchief out of his pocket and carefully wiped my face. “The thing now is to find our way out again,” he said. “Are you ready to move?”

Weak and trembling, I rose and took his hand. “Never more ready. Only don’t let go of me.”

Watson smiled and squeezed my hand. “I won’t.”

He had the twine still, and the half ball that was wound told me that we had another hour of walking to find our way to the stairs. Since there was only one lantern, which he was holding, I agreed to wind up the twine as we walked.

We linked arms and began walking. Our progress seemed slow, but the ball of twine grew steadily larger. “It must be daylight by now,” I said. “Or close.”

“How can you tell?”

“I don’t hear the groaning. Mrs Hadley said it happens only after dark.”

Through turn after turn we walked, never looking back. After some twenty minutes, Watson said, “We must be nearing the stairs, judging by the twine.”

He began to hum, then to sing in a rumbly voice. The song might have been one such as troops sing when they march.“…fight for England’s glory lads… soldiers of the Queen…” It was a heartening sound, and I began to lose the sense of horror that had overwhelmed me in the dark.

We marched on, stopping at intervals to wrap up the twine we had collected. “I swear we did not start with this much twine,” he said at one point. “We must be very near the end.”

When we saw the stairs, we both let out an audible sigh. “After you,” I said.

The door was closed, but as soon as Watson put his hand on the knob, it turned and we found ourselves back— but not in the drawing room. This time the door opened into the library, on the other side of the dining room. The door we had exited before was no longer where it had been. Reality had altered while we were exploring below.

Our first response was to stare at it, our mouths open. Then together we went through the dining room into the drawing room to see if the door we left by was still there. It was not. There were no words to describe how this made me feel. I was just glad that Watson had seen the same thing and was feeling just as baffled as I was. We went back into the library and took a final look inside that door, feeling the cold air coming up from below. I shuddered.

The horizon was brightening as we closed the door on that labyrinth. We set down our packs in the dining room and Watson headed into the kitchen. I followed him.

He looked up from the sink, where he was filling the kettle with water. “You look done in, old man. You should rest. We have a couple hours before the Hadleys return for our report. Go lie on the sofa while I make us some tea.”

The sitting room was next to the library. Even in the daylight, a shadow of my former fear came over me. “No, Watson. I… it’s so dark in there, and… I want to be able to see you.” I was aware that I was behaving irrationally, clinging to him like a small child frightened awake by a nightmare, but I was in no shape to analyse my own feelings. I needed him near me, humming tunelessly and making tea as if this was a normal morning.

“It’s just nerves,” he said gently, giving my arm a squeeze. He lit the stove and set the kettle to boil, then led me to the sitting room. “Be calm, my dear. Close your eyes for a bit—”

“The darkness…” My chest heaved as if I had been running for miles. “I cannot. Don’t leave me, John, I beg you.” This was simple panic, I realised, even as I felt powerless to stop it. Even ordinary, familiar things— the tea, the fire, the sunlight in the window— did not comfort me. The unknown lay just below us, in those dark tunnels. _Safe as houses_ meant nothing, when the house itself seemed to stand somewhere between the known and the unknown.

Watson brought me to the sideboard and opened a decanter, poured some brandy into a glass. “Sit down and drink. There, that’s a good fellow. Now, lie back on the sofa and I will sit with you.” He poked at the embers, laid a couple of logs on it, and pulled up a chair beside me.

“What are you doing?” I looked into his face and saw calm there. He was a soldier, I reasoned, and had learned to remain analytical on the field of battle. For me, this was unprecedented. I was analytical, too, but generally I uncovered the reasons behind the mysteries I investigated. A soldier doesn’t have the luxury of seeking answers. Watson wasn’t experiencing the horrible dissonance I felt, my reason fleeing in the face of impossible things.

“I’m writing up the case notes. I want to put it all in order before the Hadleys arrive.”

“What will we tell them?”

“Hush, Holmes. Just rest. I’ll handle it.”

“You must think me a coward, weeping about darkness…”

He smoothed a lock of hair off my forehead. As he continued stroking my head, I did not object. “Not at all. You’ve had a terrible fright. Being afraid and being a coward are two very different things. Some things should be feared.”

“You were not afraid.”

“No, I was _terrified_.” He smiled. “I have seen hardened soldiers sobbing and snivelling after a battle. And surely you remember me, when I first returned from the war, how I would wake up at night, terrified, screaming and weeping about things that were mere memories at that point. If memories can terrorise a man, then an experience such as we’ve just had can certainly rattle one’s nerves. No man is immune to fear, so there is no reason to feel ashamed.”

I did not sleep. The brandy calmed me, though. I held the edge of Watson’s jacket between my fingers, rubbing them back and forth over the wool. I could smell his tobacco, the sweat of the past night on him, the brandy. He wrote in his notebook with a pencil, sometimes crossing out words, sometimes sitting with his eyes shut, as if he were trying to remember a detail.

After I’d rested a while, I thought of the oscillograph. Jumping up from the settee, I ran to the drawing room, where we’d set it up. Fortunately, it was still working. I tore the paper from the machine, feeling vindicated when I saw what it had recorded. “Look!” I said. “I was right. Infrasonic vibrations are showing here.”

“Do we have a theory about the source?”

I sat down on the sofa again, looking at the graph. “Low-intensity seismic activity, perhaps.”

Watson nodded. “There was an earthquake here ten years ago. But wouldn’t we have felt movement below us if it were a quake?”

“Regular, small quakes might not be felt. I think a geologist could answer our questions.This, at least, is proof that it happened. I did not imagine it.”

“Of course you didn’t,” he said. “Did you doubt your senses? And mine?”

“I didn’t know what to believe. I did think I might have imagined parts. Perhaps I did. Certainly we did not imagine that the door moved from one room to another. I might be able to reason away much of what happened last night, but not that door.”

“Sometimes,” he said, “what we imagine is more powerful than what we know.”

By the time the Hadleys arrived, I felt calm. We’d eaten some breakfast by then, bread and eggs that she had left for us to prepare for ourselves. Watson had made us coffee, and I was just spreading jam on a second piece of toast (which he insisted that I eat), when they came through the door.

I watched Mrs Hadley walk into the drawing room, heard her soft exclamation. “Oh, my!” She turned and regarded us. John pointed to the library. We heard her give a little scream of surprise when she saw the door.

Mr Hadley poured coffee for his wife and himself. “Well, it would appear you’ve had an adventure,” he said.

“We have,” said Watson.

I wondered how my doctor would describe it all to them. I certainly had no idea what to say about the night’s events.

“What can you tell us?” Isaac Hadley asked.

“This house is built over an older one,” Watson began. “I don’t know how much of the history you learned when you took possession, but the older structure was evidently a great deal larger than this house. That manor was called Greve House. Tragic things happened there, but I’m not sure they are more tragic than the events any other house has seen. In any case, the lower level of that house underlies this one. That is where the noise emanates from, we believe. Holmes took measurements which document this. Much of the sound is pitched too low to hear, but the vibrations may be responsible for some of the disturbances.”

He said all of this in a voice as calm as if he had been explaining dyspepsia to them.

“What is the source of the noise?” Mrs Hadley asked.

“We spent several hours, most of the night, exploring the passageways, but were not able to locate a source. Something geological, we theorise, some seismic activity may be responsible for the sounds we’ve heard. An expert may be able to determine whether that is true.”

Mr Hadley frowned at the door, which could now be seen through the archway into the library. “What is down there, through that door? There is a small basement area below the kitchen, a sort of root cellar, but no other doors in the house lead down.”

“It’s a maze of corridors with some rooms,” I said. “All the walls are masoned stones. At one place, the stone corridors join up with a network of caves, but we were running low on lamp oil at that point and did not go far into them. We’re not sure what this lower level was used for, but if history is any guide—”

“Storage, or shelter,” Mr Hadley suggested. “In times of war, it could be stocked with food and water.”

“The caves suggest that this land may have been in use since ancient times,” Watson went on. “There is no way of knowing what structures may have preceded Greve House, but an aura seems to cling to the place.”

“That sounds rather romantic.” Mrs Hadley smiled grimly. “Like a folk tale or legend. The reality is much more terrifying.”

Watson smiled. “Sometimes legends are forgotten, but their aura lingers in a place. Each layer of history adds something to it.”

“What do you suggest?” Mr Hadley asked, looking at us both. “It would be prohibitively expensive to have the place levelled, the lower levels filled in, but we could knock down the house and build a new one on the old foundation. From what you’re saying, though, that would not change anything. Whatever is causing this is down there, in the ground.”

“True,” Watson said. “There is no guarantee that a new house would be free from the… aura. But it depends on what you want. There are many supposedly haunted places in England, and people do live in buildings said to be frequented by ghosts, tolerating any strange events as nuisance only.”

“I cannot live in a house where inexplicable changes happen while we sleep.” Mrs Hadley set down her coffee cup and frowned. “And the groaning— who could live with that? We shall have to move.”

“I wish we knew why,” Mr Hadley said. “If we understood, it might be tolerable. Have you no scientific theory?”

“Any explanation we might give you would be speculative,” Watson said. “A geologist might be able to shed some light on it, but a complete explanation may be beyond our science. We could say that the land here has some anomaly that causes these phenomena, but that doesn’t really explain them, does it? Holmes and I have investigated to the extent possible now, using the newest scientific methods. In another fifty years, the mystery may be solved as science advances and methods improve. We, however, have no theory to propose, only speculation, and that does not even touch some of the things you have observed.”

Our eyes all went towards the library, where the new door remained closed.

Mr Hadley nodded, his expression thoughtful. “I suppose we will have to be satisfied with that. It’s not as though we paid for the place, so money is not the issue.”

I cleared my throat. “You might allow tours, you know. There are agencies that manage that sort of thing. It’s a marvellous location for seances.”

“A haunted inn,” Watson suggested. “A tourist destination.”

Mrs Hadley laughed. “You surprise me, Doctor. You and Mr Holmes both. I was under the impression that you were men of science.”

I held the oscillograph record, looking at the evidence of the unknown something that had terrified me. “ _There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy_ ,” I said. “As a man of science, I can collect evidence with my own senses and by using scientific instruments, but I cannot quantify the unknown. It seems likely that we will continue to discover new things about the world, and perhaps even bend a few laws of nature in doing so.”

“It cannot have been so terrible spending the night here,” Mr Hadley said. “You seem to have survived unscathed.”

“It was an interesting night,” Watson said. “We will never forget it.”

“Never,” I agreed. “A singular case.”

On the train, I finally slept. Watson kept his hand on my thigh, rubbing at intervals to soothe me if I jerked awake. As we approached London, he roused me.

“Watson, I must tell you—” I said, collecting myself.

“Not yet, Holmes. When we are home, relaxing and smoking our pipes.” He smiled fondly. “Some stories need to be told in front of a fire, you know.”

I closed my eyes and leaned against him, remembering the darkness that had chilled me to my bones, the icy cold of his skin, and the strange glow of that underground room. I felt as if all my suppositions about the world had been overturned. There was some force I did not understand that co-existed with gravity, magnetism, radio waves, and ultra-violet light.

I admit that parts of what I had experienced might have taken place in my fear-addled brain. It could have been a dream. That is exactly what I would tell anyone who related such a fantastic story to me. But with every atom of my being, I knew that this was not the case. I could not prove that the groans we heard were the sounds of some primeval force rearranging the physical world, or that reality had shifted to show me Watson dead before revoking that vision and returning him to me alive. I could prove that those unearthly sounds came from somewhere in that house, but I could not tell their source. And my thoughtsalways returned to the door; no physics could explain that. It frustrated me, but at the same time, I was not sure my mind could grasp the truth behind the evidence.

And Watson had calmly sat in that dining room, explaining it all to the Hadleys. He had not been hysterical or dramatic. He had spoken like a scientist, offering only what we had seen. I noted that he had left out the entire separation incident, and wondered what he would say about that.

Watson had cabled ahead to Mrs Hudson that we would be home by late afternoon. No sooner had we dragged our cases up the stairs than she had tea ready and waiting for us.

“You both look exhausted,” she said. “I hope you’ll retire early, Mr Holmes.” She looked at Watson with a question on her lips. “I’ve made up the spare bed, Doctor, if you wish to stay.”

“Thank you, Mrs Hudson. I do wish.”

On the landing, she paused, looking at us. “I hope the pair of you are forgetting whatever quarrel has kept the doctor away so long. Two can live much more cheaply than one, and with more contentment. You should move back, Doctor. Then it won’t feel so lonely around here any more. And Mr Holmes will not be so forlorn.”

I was about to open my mouth and insist that everything was fine, that Watson had his own home, and a medical practice as well, and didn’t need to come back to Baker Street just to cure my loneliness, but he spoke first.

“It’s a good idea. We’ll discuss it tonight.”

I waited until we had slippers on our feet and pipes lit before I attempted to put my thoughts into words. “Thank you for coming with me. I could never have done it on my own.”

He nodded. “It felt good to be working together. We’ve always made an excellent team.”

“Indeed.” I smiled. “Watson, I must be honest with you. I expected this case to have a logical solution, and hoped it would be an object lesson.”

“A lesson for whom?” He was smiling.

“Well, for you, in part. I wanted you to see the foolishness of spiritualism, but it turned out that I was the one who learned a lesson about my own foolishness. I say _learned,_ but I can’t say exactly what knowledge I acquired. It was really an epiphany. Evidence, but no conclusions. We didn’t really solve anything.”

“No, we didn’t. And you should not censure yourself for that.I know that it makes you uncomfortable to face a mystery that defies analysis, but sometimes analysis isn’t possible. We have to poke about in the dark, trying to make sense of what we find.”

“That labyrinth, Watson. I’ve never felt anything like it. When I was alone in the dark, in that passageway, I felt something so evil— not the word, perhaps. An inhuman force. To that force— I can hardly call it a being, for it had no substance— I was just bit of dust. It felt inexorable, unfeeling. I have never thought of evil as a disembodied force, but now I wonder if I have been wrong.”

“You’re not,” he replied, pouring us each an inch of scotch. “Most of what we call evil is completely human and common. What was in that house was primitive— a force, as you called it. Whether such a thing can be called evil or not, I don’t know. And I doubt whether we will ever feel anything like it again in our lives.”

“I hope not,” I said, shuddering. Just knowing it was there would give me much to think about. “How did we become separated? When I awoke, you were simply gone.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. It was the same for me. Maybe the groaning was reality shifting and realigning in different ways— not in a physical sense, but in some other, unknown dimension. That might explain the door as well. It’s beyond what science can describe.”

We sat in silence for a few minutes. I looked at the comforting details that told me I was at home, and that all is well, but my mind was not quiet.

“I must tell you something, Watson. When I was lost, before you found me, I saw you down there. You did not respond to my cries. I ran to you, but you were unheeding, as if you were a ghost. I tried to reach for you, but you went away. I followed, and you led me to—” I choked again at the memory. Tears started in my eyes again, as they had in that strange room.

He leaned towards me. “What did you see?”

“I saw you— dead.” I felt myself beginning to shake. “I couldn’t move. I wanted to lie there until I died with you. I must have fainted, and only awoke when I heard you calling me. An hallucination, perhaps, though it felt real enough.”

“ _This is the very painting of your fears_ ,” he said softly. “Fear can make us think we see things that aren’t there. It fleshes our thoughts into monstrous things. I believe that there is some primal memory in all of us that fear brings forth. Our rational minds cannot grasp it, but it is there, understanding what we reject as impossible.”

My mind did not want to grasp any such possibility, but I had nothing better to propose. “And how am I ever to know what facts are? If there are truths that we can’t see, can’t prove or disprove— how am I to do my work? I am a dealer in facts, what my senses tell me, and now I don’t know whether I can trust them!”

“There are things that are real, and yet cannot be proved.” His mind, more flexible than mine, was somehow able to accept what I could not: that what had happened was real, but inexplicable. My mind kept refusing that conclusion because it was no solution.

He looked at me with sorrow, and I asked the thing I’d been wondering. “What did you see down there?”

“My greatest fear.” He rose and came to me, knelt at my feet and took my hands in his. “I want to tell you something.”

“Anything, Watson.”

“It’s rather long, and you look exhausted. It can wait until morning. I would be happy if you would sleep, Holmes.”

“No,” I said. “I cannot lie in a dark room, and I will not leave you.”

He rose and extended a hand to me. “Then I will lie with you, as your brother. Will you let me?”

I nodded.

“Come, then. Let’s prepare for bed.”

We took turns performing our ablutions. He made me put on my pyjamas and get under the covers. He then took off his shirt and trousers and slid under the covers beside me. We lay like spoons, with him curled against my back. I was ashamed at how this made me feel, having hidden my nature from him for so long. Surely he would leave if he knew, and I could not bear to have that happen now.

The moon shone through our window, its reflected light like a lantern in the darkness. I thought of that black tunnel again and pulled Watson’s arm around me.

“Holmes, it’s perfectly natural,” he said in the semi-darkness. “You need not be ashamed.”

My breath caught. “How long… have you known?” I whispered.

“Almost since I have known you.”

“You never said.”

His laugh was quiet, a small puff of breath against my neck. “You are a singular kind of man, Holmes, one who does not indulge his nature. You have many times stated that you prize reason above all else, and early on I recognised that you had learned to deal with your needs alone, or perhaps suppress them. When I married, I did it in part because of you.”

“Because of me? How so?”

“I was afraid that I might lead you into something you did not want. I had begun to sense that you were wavering, and knew that it would be anathema to you to indulge yourself with another man. I could not tempt you, knowing that it would endanger you. I thought it better to leave and maintain our friendship however I could. You would be less anxious, knowing you could count on me, but not having me too close, disturbing your thoughts.

“When I married and moved out, though, I noticed a change in you. I had expected you to be more settled, but you seemed bereft. The words you said to me when I told you I was engaged sounded bitter, but I didn’t take it personally; your complaint was against the institution, not me or Miss Morstan. I understood you to be one of those men who do not crave that kind of intimacy. We had lived together for years at that point. Did you think I would not understand? Men like us—”

My heart began to pound. _Men like us?_

“Men like us follow varied courses. I knew men in the army who lived as inverts, then returned to their wives and sweethearts, leaving it all behind without a thought. To them, it was a temporary solace, an alliance of brothers in the field. It had nothing to do with who they were or the lives they led. But there are men like me, whose nature is less defined, a dual nature, perhaps. Some men who are married with children are like this. They want the things that marriage offers and society expects. But they cannot deny the urges they feel. I do not speak merely of carnal urges. I mean the intimacy of the mind and of the heart.

“When I married, I saw your unhappiness and did not know how to fix it. Mary was a good woman, and I hoped for children. I loved her, Holmes, but not as I love you. When you died…” His voice caught and he remained silent for a moment. “Then we lost the child, and Mary died shortly after… I had lost everyone I cared about and did not know how to go on. I grieved, losing my desire to live. A friend mentioned that his wife knew people who did seances, and suggested that it might give me some comfort to talk to my wife and child. I didn’t think much of spiritualism.” He gave a short laugh. “Actually, I thought it was all bunk. But I was desperate, and so I went.”

“Something changed your mind, Watson. What was it?”

He closed his eyes, shaking his head slowly. “I did not see visions— neither Mary nor my little Rosie. The medium gave me messages from them, but they were the kind of things that anyone could invent. I wanted to believe, but had doubts. I went along with it because it seemed to lessen my grief for them. But then, without any question from me, the spirit board spelled, _Holmes is here_.”

“I was there? But, Watson—”

“Your spirit was there, Holmes. Everyone knew you had died. I had published an account in the paper after Moriarty’s brother started his campaign— but that’s neither here nor there. The medium could have known that and used you to convince me. To see if it was genuine, I asked a question, something only you would know the answer to. The answer spelled out by the board was correct.”

“What was the question?”

He laughed. “It wasn’t anything private, just something we both would know, and no others. I asked why you no longer wore your old mouse-coloured dressing gown. Your answer was _HCL._ ”

I smiled at that. “Muriatic Acid. I spilled it on the gown and ruined it.”

“Fortunately you were not wearing it when the spill occurred,” he said. “And that gave me something to buy you for Christmas. When the spirit board gave your answer, everyone stared, not understanding.

“Was your hand on the planchette?”

“It was not.” I could almost feel his smile. “Nor was the hand of a chemist on it, nor anyone who would have known what HCl meant. And I was aware that not even Mrs Hudson knew about the gown. Only we two knew what had happened to that gown, that you had disposed of it secretly because you were afraid she would make you stop your experiments.”

“What was my message to you?”

“ _I will see you again._ ” He paused. “When the board spelled these words, I could smell… it was you, Holmes. We all have distinctive smells— the soaps and oils and colognes we use, of course, but under those there is a something peculiar to each of us. It was you, your essence, just as I can smell your body here, in this bed. You were there.” He pressed his forehead into the back of my neck, breathing deeply.

“I thought of you so often during my travels, Watson. Not only passing thoughts. When I lay in whatever bed I had found each night, I imagined you, there with me.” I stopped, embarrassed to say more. “I missed you so much.”

“Nothing ever filled that void for me, when I thought you dead. I imagined you as well.” He was silent for a moment. I felt him sigh deeply. “I didn’t know what to believe when I received that message. I thought that maybe it meant I would die soon and join you in whatever place you were. That was when I began exploring the phenomenon more seriously. I went to seances and talked with spiritualists, read books and pamphlets, trying to understand. When you returned— well, it is one thing to say one can communicate with the spirits of the dead, but to communicate across an entire continent in the real world, with a living person is something else.”

“But Watson, clearly that will one day be possible. What the future will consider common will seem like magic to us.”

He chuckled. “No doubt. But I am sure that they will not use a spirit board to speak across the miles. What I mean is this: there is some bond between us, Sherlock. My love kept my grief fresh and allowed you to speak to me, comforting me. That is the only way I can understand it.” He sighed and pulled me closer.

This was why Watson had immersed himself in spiritualism. He wanted to explain something that defied logic, and had found a way to understand it. I understood that now, having been through an inexplicable and terrifying experience. I had not known his feelings before; I thought that feelings were all on my side. What had been obvious to him, I had rejected for lack of evidence.

“You returned to me,” he said, “a thing I had thought impossible. But I have not returned to you. I have kept myself away for all these months, fearing that I might lose you again if I spoke of my feelings. Down there, in the darkness, I feared that I had lost my chance. I thought I might never see you again.”

He held me tighter and I felt something poking my posterior. “John,” I said. “When you say _men like us…?_ ”

“You don’t need to hide your nature, Sherlock,” he said. “You don’t need to hide from me. Whatever you want from me, you may have. If you want to live as we have been, in separate houses, visiting one another as friends, that is fine. If you ask me to move back and live with you, but only as a brother, I will do that. And if you want more, I will give it to you. It is a great pity never to know love, to regret things we might have experienced. I will not try to persuade you or seduce you, but it makes me sad to think of you so solitary. At one point, I thought you might feel as I do, but then—”

I was embarrassed for him to see my face. “I pulled away from you. I am a coward, whatever you say. I ran away from the thing I most wanted rather than risk rejection. But when I saw your body, dead, on that stone floor, I grieved. And when I saw you alive, I knew what a fool I’d been.”

I felt his smile against my neck. “I was foolish as well. I didn’t offer you a chance to reject me because I, too, was afraid.”

I rolled over in the bed to face him. “Don’t ever leave me, John. There are many things I don’t understand, and you must help me. In the darkness of this world, you are my conductor of light. I will learn from you, if you can be patient with me.”

He smiled. Then he leaned towards me and kissed me gently. “We will learn together, my love.”

We never did uncover any reasonable explanation for the events of that night. As we had tried to explain to the Hadleys, there was something at work below that house that could not be explained scientifically. Some might call it spiritual or preternatural. It wasn’t evil, I gradually realised. It simply was something my mind was not prepared to grasp. My terror down in that maze arose from the fears already in my heart. Reality altered in a way that showed me what I most feared. I wanted my Watson back, and thought that he had left me for good.

The groans, the mysterious door, that dark pit— these were real, physical manifestations of an unknown… something. This is an unusually vague description to come from me, a man who puts reason before all else. I cannot apologise for having no answer. As a scientist, I have seen great advances made in all branches of knowledge, and arrogantly assumed that all mysteries could be put to rest, perhaps within my lifetime.

That arrogance is what I lost in the labyrinth. We are so small, I realised, our minds just beginning to explore, with our tiny lanterns and primitive devices, an unknown that gapes before us, invisible. The horror of that realisation stays with me as I consider the commonplace evil that men bring upon one another.

Watson never wrote the case up and we never discussed it again. He kept his notes and filed them away in a binder labeled _Greve House._ The only item added was when we received notice that the Hadleys had abandoned the house and returned to Pennsylvania. They sent us the geologist’s report, showing nothing unusual. They did not contact us again, and we did not revisit the house. The case was never closed.

But it did affect us both, changing us as individuals and turning our relationship in a new direction. Even after the many years we had not acknowledged what our hearts already knew, I feel no regret in that regard. We had to experience all the things we did in order to arrive here.

I do not know if love can survive death, whether there is an afterlife where we meet our loved ones, but in this world, in this life, we love one another as fully and humanly as we can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,  
> Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.  
> \- Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio
> 
> This is the very painting of your fear.  
> \- Macbeth (3.4.64), Lady Macbeth speaking to Macbeth


End file.
